'Captain Cook's Ships, "Adventure" and "Resolution", in the Tagus off Belem Castle, Portugal' with inscription 'Captain Cook's Ships, "Adventure" and "Resolution", in the Tagus" off Belem Castle, Portugal' and with further inscription (see note below) on an old label on the backing board watercolour on paper 5 3/8 x 7¼in. (13.8 x 18.4cm.) and 'Captain Cook's Ships "Adventure" and "Resolution", in the Tagus off Belem Castle, near Lisbon' with inscription 'Captain Cook's Ships "Adventure" and "Resolution", in the Tagus off Belem Castle, near Lisbon' and with further inscription (see note below) on an old label on the backing board watercolour on paper 5 3/8 x 7¼in. (13.8 x 18.4cm.) (2)

Both watercolours are titled by inscriptions, presumably by the Allen family, on labels on the backing boards which identify the ships as Cook's second voyage ships Adventure and Resolution. The subject is either one invented by John Cleveley, as neither the second nor third voyage ships were in the Tagus on either their outward or return routes, or the ships have been incorrectly identified by the labels, and the watercolours are views taken on Cleveley's excursion to Portugal and the Azores in 1775-76 (for which see the note to lot 35). The latter seems more likely, given the errors in the continuing inscription: 'Drawn by Willm. Cleveley who was Carpenter of the ship " Resolution", - and painted by his brother John Cleveley, who was a marine Painter of some celebrity, also a Lieutenant in the Navy, and who accompanied Lord Mulgrave and Sir Joseph Banks, on voyages of discovery to the North Pole and Iceland. He died in London in 1786.' 'Willm.' is presumably a misnomer for John's brother James, carpenter on the Resolution on the third voyage (with the Discovery), and John did not accompany Lord Mulgrave's Arctic expedition (although was widely assumed to have until Ann Savours's article published in The Mariner's Mirror, 69, August 1983, pp.301-4 'The younger Cleveley and the Arctic, 1773-74').